A shadowy, belligerent, but noble man enters the scene, and everyone goes silent. He looks hard, like an outlaw, but everyone in the room immediately recognise what and who he is. “Pinkerton”, they whisper nervously. “He’s a Pinkerton.”
This scene appears in just about every Western or Western-inspired piece of popular media, but to truly understand the reason the name is spoken with such esteem, we must look back at the man who started it all: the great spy himself, Allan Pinkerton.
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Allan Pinkerton was born on August 25, 1819, in Glasgow, Scotland. He was a clever child, but unruly. He preferred self-learning, reading as many books as he could at home, but spending school hours hunting in nearby woods rather than in class.
At age 10, his father suddenly died, so Pinkerton officially left school to become a cooper, building barrels to support his mother. In the following years, he joined the British Chartist movement calling for political reform across the United Kingdom. Participants in the scheme, of which there were close to 3.5 million, were branded traitors to the Crown in 1842. As his peers were swept up and incarcerated, Pinkerton had no choice but to emigrate to the United States with his wife – whom he had only married the day before – in 1842.
The journey was troubled, and just when the ship spotted the shores of Nova Scotia it ran around and sunk. Pinkerton and his wife were badly injured, and their possessions were destroyed.
The pair eventually ended up in Detroit. Pinkerton found little opportunity in the city, but word soon reached him of Dundee, Illinois, a small town outside of Chicago that was dominated predominantly by his Scottish kin. They set out to establish a home, making the trek on only as much food and shelter as they could get from kind farmers along the way.
They finally arrived in 1843. Pinkerton sent his wife to reside in Chicago until he had built them a cabin and founded a cooperage, through which he could support them both.
Soon enough, Pinkerton’s political inclinations flared again. He sided with the Chicago abolitionists, calling for an end to slavery. His home would become a stop on the Underground Railroad.
His first foray into criminal detective work came quite by accident in 1848. While out scouting the woods for trees he could use in his barrel-making, Pinkerton came across a band of counterfeiters. Immediately, he suspected them of being associated with the Banditti of the Prairie, an infamous group of outlaws who had terrorised the state for 20 years. He monitored their movements before reporting his findings to the sheriff, who is said to have deputised him on the spot.
One year later, Pinkerton was appointed the first police detective in Chicago. He proved so good at the job, regardless of his previous lack of experience, that in 1850 he went freelance, partnering with attorney Edward Rucker to create the North-Western Police Agency, which would later become the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.
Their code was simple:
- Accept no bribes.
- Never compromise with criminals.
- Partner with local law enforcement agencies.
- Refuse scandalous cases.
- Turn down reward money.
- Never raise fees without first informing the client.
- Keep clients apprised on an ongoing basis.
Like a predecessor to the FBI, but without the concern of paperwork or the need to hold back in the ruthless pursuit of justice, Pinkerton agents went after everyone from embezzlers to murderers across the country.
“On reading a telegraphic newspaper report of a large or small robbery, with the aid of my vast records and great personal experience and familiarity with these matters, I can at once tell the character of the work, and then, knowing the names, history, habits, and quite frequently, the rendezvous of men doing that type of work, am able to determine, with almost unerring certainty, not only the very parties who committed the robberies, but also what disposition they are likely to make of their plunder, and at what points they may be hiding.”
In 1856, Pinkerton hired the first woman detective in the U.S. – Kate Warne. She would play a crucial part in agency operations until her death in 1868.
As US territory expanded during the decade, and the rail network grew, Pinkerton made contact with George McClellan, Chief Engineer and Vice President of the Illinois Central Railroad, to help solve a series of train robberies. It was here that he would also meet the company’s lawyer, Abraham Lincoln, in whose life Pinkerton would come to play an important part.
When the American Civil War broke out, Pinkerton would come to serve as head of the Union Intelligence Service, the predecessor to the U.S. Secret Service. He planted spies in the Confederate army, and undertook several undercover missions within his own ranks to weed out counter-intelligence forces.
In 1861, while in Baltimore as part of the investigation into the head of an international criminal empire, he uncovered a cleverly-crafted plot to assassinate the recently-elected President Abraham Lincoln as he made his way to Washington DC for inauguration. Legend states that he burst into a party and whisked Lincoln out of town in time to foil the assassination.
His most important success was followed by his biggest defeat. Returning to support the railroads, he was commissioned with tracking down the nefarious outlaw Jesse James. James eluded Pinkerton for some time, eventually causing the railroad companies to withdraw funding. Incensed by this, Pinkerton would use his own money to track James until one of his agents was killed while undercover.
This marked one of very few failures in Pinkerton’s career. He would go on to catch the likes of Cole Younger, who was a member of James’s gang, and train robbers Black Jack Ketcham and the Reno Brothers.
He also wrote a series of crime novels that would go on to influence Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes franchise.
In 1872, during one of his final major cases, Pinkerton was hired by the Spanish Government to suppress a revolution in Cuba. Little did he realise, the revolutionaries were calling for an end to slavery and the citizen’s right to a vote; the very two ideals which he had supported so adamantly during his life. Spain would eventually abolish slavery in 1880.
Allan Pinkerton died on July 1st, 1884. The cause has never been confirmed, but it is commonly believed that after slipping on pavement and biting his tongue, he contracted gangrene.
Two decades later, the Federal Bureau of Investigation was founded, and would incorporate many of Pinkerton’s systems into their own, including a centralised database of criminal identification records.
Following Pinkerton’s death, his sons Robert and William took over the business. Though they had some success, the agency developed a violent reputation during this period which has become a primary influencer on their portrayal in popular media. Still, it remains strong today as a corporate risk management company, operating in 100 countries over the world.
Today, Pinkerton’s name is still invoked when celebrating the best detectives of our time, and so it should. His influence is undeniable; not just on the world of intelligence, but in many aspects of the justice system that has made the world a better place.